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Maximum Term in Slaying of Teacher

The 20-year-old man convicted of killing his former teacher, Jonathan M. Levin, was sentenced yesterday to the maximum term of 25 years to life in prison by a judge who denounced him as a ''sadistic and manipulative'' criminal.

The convicted killer, Corey Arthur, maintained the seemingly remorseless posture that he had throughout the trial as he was sentenced for second-degree murder by Justice Marcy L. Kahn of State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Justice Kahn told Mr. Arthur that the torture and killing of Mr. Levin in his Upper West Side apartment on May 30, 1997, was a barbaric act that showed a ''level of depravity few people could comprehend.''

''You planned and carried out the betrayal of someone who selflessly gave you his friendship,'' Justice Kahn said. ''You were the one who chose Jonathan Levin as your victim. You were the one who used your relationship with him to get into his apartment.''

After being told that his family could not speak for him, Mr. Arthur declined to make a statement before being sentenced, and he showed no emotion as Justice Kahn rebuked him. When Mr. Levin's mother, Carol, made a statement to the court, Mr. Arthur scribbled on a notepad with a blank look on his face.

''He was the only one who knew Jon, who knew his mentor, his teacher, his friend, would not be able to turn his back on anyone who asked him for his help -- certainly not one of his students,'' Mrs. Levin said as another of her sons, Lee, and a daughter, Laura, stood by her side. ''How could anyone but a dangerous, brutal and evil person deliberately destroy the life of a person who reached out to him, who believed in him?''

Prosecutors said Mr. Arthur and an accomplice went to visit Mr. Levin, the son of Gerald M. Levin, the chairman of Time Warner, and used a knife to inflict torture, including three cuts across his throat, until he gave up the code to his bank card. Mr. Levin, an English teacher at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, was then shot. But the jury did not believe the evidence had proved that Mr. Arthur had pulled the trigger. The jury declined to convict him of first-degree murder, which could have brought him a prison sentence of life without parole. The man suspected of being an accomplice, Montoun T. Hart, is to be tried on second-degree murder charges next month.

Justice Kahn also said yesterday that while Mr. Arthur was on trial, he committed disciplinary infractions in jail, violated a court order and defaced courtroom property. She said he had shown no remorse for his crime, was not a good candidate for rehabilitation and was antisocial.

Though acknowledging that Mr. Arthur grew up in a dysfunctional family racked by drug abuse and his attempted suicide in 1994, Justice Kahn said there was no excuse for his actions. ''As your former friend and mentor pleaded for his life, you did nothing for him,'' she said, adding that Mr. Arthur committed the crime because he ''took pleasure in the suffering of others.''

While the sentencing included the judge's analysis of Mr. Arthur and eloquently expressed anger from Mr. Levin's mother, it marked the end of a trial that produced few answers as to why Mr. Arthur turned on the man his lawyers say was a father figure the troubled youth needed.

The lead prosecutor, Eugene Hurley, called the killing the worst he had seen in 15 years on the job. ''They were acts of barbarity motivated by greed and self-interest,'' he said.

But Mr. Arthur's lawyer, Anthony Ricco, portrayed his client as the product of the impoverished, troubled world he grew up in, calling him a ''legacy of a tragedy that started a long time ago.'' Mr. Arthur's mother was 16 when she gave birth to him. Mr. Arthur's father, who had hoped to attend college on a basketball scholarship, succumbed to drug addiction. He died several months before the murder, homeless.

Mr. Ricco has said that one question the case raised was how to prevent more fatherless young men from succumbing to the streets as Mr. Arthur did. He said Mr. Arthur once showed potential, which Mr. Levin apparently saw, and wanted to speak in court yesterday, but his lawyers said it was better that they speak for him.

''This young man feels great remorse,'' Mr. Ricco said at the sentencing. ''He knows that the best thing that ever happened to him, he was a part of destroying.''

In an interview with the CBS news program ''60 Minutes'' broadcast last Sunday, Mr. Arthur said he regretted Mr. Levin's death. ''If I could do anything to change it, I would,'' he said. He admitted being in his former teacher's apartment on the day of the murder, but insisted that he had not gone there to rob or kill Mr. Levin.

Mr. Arthur has blamed others present in the apartment for carrying out the murder, but he has not named them. But prosecutors say Mr. Arthur killed his teacher after the robbery because he was the only one Mr. Levin could have later identified to the police.

Mr. Levin's mother praised the judge's ruling, but in her statement she said her family would never recover. ''We will never be healed,'' she said. ''We will never be whole.''